Things just aren’t the same at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge today – due to the partial government shutdown. The Refuge staff has been furloughed. They are not being paid, and their work is not being done, creating a month-long backlog – so far!
The Visitor Center is closed although the trails are open. At the Wildlife Observation Center, the most popular visitor destination at the Refuge, the automatic gate has malfunctioned and cannot be repaired until the government shutdown has ended. So visitors have to park in the small area in front of the gate and walk in from there.
The Friends are also being affected negatively by this situation. The Nature Shop, located in the Visitor Center, is closed and Friends have received no income from sales in over a month. Regularly scheduled programs, such as the January Second Sunday program, had to be cancelled. Committee planning meetings have not been held, which affects development of the Calendar of Events, creating new interpretive exhibits, and outreach programs.
Volunteers donate their time and talents to the Refuge because it’s a place we care about. Right now, volunteers are also on leave and their projects are on hold. Plans to renovate the Garden Club Blind have been brought to a stand-still as well as other initiatives.
The Refuge works with a number of other partners and those workshops and programs have also been affected or cancelled due to the continuing shutdown.
The number of people affected by the shutdown at Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge is unknown, but as you can imagine, there is a ripple effect which touches many people directly or indirectly – whether they are U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employees, volunteers, visitors, partners, and those who would have participated in events, programs, or workshops.
Contact your Congressional representatives and urge them to end the shutdown so the staff can return to work, volunteers can resume their duties and Congress can get busy with the real issues – the reason we sent them to Washington in the first place.